Split stay BLT/Kidani and the last minute Boulder Ridge Room!

You can find me at Animal Kingdom!

Hi all. We left for BLT from GA on June 19th. Nice drive down as usual. Arrived at BLT around 4 pm. Had requested 7530, got 7330. I had done online app check in, but never got the email or text that the room was ready. Got up to the room, my magic band didn't work. Never does!!! My husbands always seems to though somehow. As always, love this place and glad it is home! Our mousekeeping staff is always so wonderful, they came on day 2 for some reason and did a full cleaning! Even lined up the kids shoes. Love that extraness! Utilized the pools daily this trip, at both hotels. Played a lot of giant connect 4 with the 3 year old. Got to finally be in a teeny Florida hurricane!!! Crossed the bridge during it and couldn't see it was raining so hard. This also happened to be the day that Contemporary had a fire alarm or something go off, so the building was evacuated during said storm, and it was a crazy time in there! I think this was Tuesday June 25th. It was awesome! Finally got to go to TOTWL, which is pretty cool, but I prefer sitting on our own balcony. Cooked in a lot more this trip, which is actually quite nice! To sit there eating dinner as a family watching the Monorail go by, are times I will never forget, as this is most likely my Grandmas last trip. =(

Gotta give a shout out to the good old Contempo Cafe! Love that place, love the CM's who went in the back and grabbed me 6 flourless chocolate cakes (EAT THIS, TRUST ME) to go, and love their food! In all my trips, this Cafe has been the one constant good thing! Is that weird???

On our 1st Epcot day, we hopped on the monorail around 8:20, no waits, and arrived at Epcot at 8:43. We did not actually get into the gates for an additional 40 mins! What the heck is up with that? When going to any other park it has never taken us that long. Everything was wonderful until our 2nd Epcot day, when we hopped on the monorail, this time at 8 am, to give us even more time to get in. When we got to TTC, we found that the Epcot rail was not working. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but shouldn't there be some sort of announcement from the driver, stating that "If you are going to TTC, please note that Epcot trains are not running?" My husband was still back at the hotel, and if I had known this, we would have either stayed on and came back, or had him pick us up from TTC, but He was heading up to get on the train too. But instead, we get off the hotels train, walk down and are told we have to get on the bus. No thanks! So we got back on the train, had to wait 8 mins or so, and spend a total of 35 mins of wasted time. I went to the front desk to ask like why they don't have communication on these things. He said normally they do!! And nicely offered me 3 any passes for Epcot because we were going to try to rope drop Soarin'. Greg at BLT, love you man!

So we hop in the car and head over. My son is finally 40 inches. He rode on Test Track, twice, Thunder Mountain, and Dinosaur! We get down to Soarin' and he's like a millimeter too short, and they tell us no. And not even sorry about it, just flat out NO. I told them but he's rode everything else, like obviously there is something off with your measurements, he had JUST gotten off TT! They did not give any craps about my words, assured me it was measured daily (Perhaps with an off measuring tape that needs replacing?), and turned us away. I was really mad at the treatment. I get that rules are rules, but there was no I'm sorry ma'am I'm not sure why ours would measure differently than ALL the other rides in the world. Whatever. Confirmed this on Facebook where many others said the same has happened to them, just with Soarin'. So like obviously they are wrong, but nobody cares enough to fix it? Over it.

We moved to Kidani on June 29th. We packed up our things, loaded the cars, and headed over there early so we could check out the resort before Boma dinner. Upon arrival, rooms were not ready. We had requested 2 studios, as CLOSE to each other as possible due to elderly/ECV drivers who would be with my 2 daughters in 1 room, my husband son and I in the other. My mom got the text that her room was ready. 5th floor about 8 doors from elevator! Awesome! I never got the text so I went to the desk. They gave us a room on 2nd floor, on the complete opposite end of the place. I asked her "This is really the closest you could get us???" She did not care one bit about how upset I was. She offered to get us a closer room the next day, but would still be 40 doors away from my mom but on the other side of the building. Like what difference does that make at that point. I just cannot believe when they receive a request like that weeks in advance that they cannot plan out better. Our bell man, he was outside chatting with my husband, and in their conversation he was like "Did they offer to move your bags for you at BLT?" Nope, didn't even know this was a thing....Man he said, I used to work there, much prefer it here. So he told us where to park, however we didn't understand the whole elevator system as we had not seen the halls yet. So we parked near Zazu, but when we asked what way to the elevators, a CM passing by directed us back towards the lobby. So we walked under the building for a bit, then back up the other way to our room, which was the 2nd to last section on the Jambo pathway side. Holy hell! Beautiful place to be, but I will never stay there again due to the lack of CM's giving a crap and that insane walk. To get back and forth, I started borrowing my grandmas ECV and was tearing up those hallways, and I got some looks, but I didn't care. I had to go back and forth between the rooms at least 25 times and at 500 steps per trip and long park days, I'm good.

Boma dinner was SO not what I was expecting. I have seen nicer school cafeterias. Honestly, it was loud, and too many people that you could barely walk back to your table, 20 min wait at the carving station. Only thing that I can say I loved there was the peanut rice and the corn pudding, I think, those were amazing tasty dishes. But otherwise, I won't be doing that again and I was so sad it wasn't all that I had hoped it would be. Zebra domes were alright, but not as amazing as I had heard either.

Sanaa breakfast. We were on DDP, so I headed down to grab us some food before heading out to AK. First morning was fine, took about 10ish mins to get waffle plate, the Boers breakfast and french toast. All good. Day 2 I went down again, ordered the same things, took 25 mins before I finally had to go ask where the heck is my food? There was NOBODY in the place. It was so weird, and they did not apologize or offer up a why. Day 3 (Because like what other choices were there) I told them hey yesterday it took a really long time, what's fast? So they suggested the croissant sandwich, which came up in 3 mins. Perfect, thanks ladies! This was our last morning there, and because TOT had been down on our HS day, we told the kids we would rope drop it. We drove over to HS at 8:15. Got in the gates within minutes and standing on the street by 8:30. Got on and off the ride by 9:45. Then went over and rode Star Tours and left. When we got to our hotel room, at 10:30, none of our bands would work. Um, check out is 11, yes? Shouldn't bands still work? So I see a mousekeeping staff walking by and ask can they let us in. They did not speak great English but said that no, they could not. They tried to call front desk, no phones were working. The CM with us also called with their device, no answer. I called from my cell, and told them hey we are locked out and have now 20 mins to gather our things. We were packed, but just a few things needed to be loaded, plus I had to go help with the other room too. They said we needed to come to the front desk. Nah, that's a really long walk, please send someone to us. Oh, we will send someone down. 20 mins go by, NO ONE CAME. I call again, well ma'am you could come to the front desk? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO I do not think so, oh we are sending someone....You sure they didn't get lost on the long walk? At this point I am like hey it's 11, are you going to like charge us for extra time or will you give us 30 mins since you wasted 30 mins of our time? They said to take "as long as we needed". When the CM arrived to open the door, my husband asked, "what if we leave to the car and need to get back in? Can you use your machine there to re-key us?" She said no I cannot you need to go to the desk. He was super mad at this point, and told her to take our magic bands to the front, re-key them, and bring them back to us. She flat out rudely was like yah I'm not going to do that, and not once did ANYONE say we are so sorry this happened, or offer explanation for being totally locked out of the room! Ridiculous! My mom got an email about our experience and we let them know how displeased we were with the treatment here. What stinks about it, is I really got amazing sleep quality at this hotel! Maybe the peacefulness of it? Which was all ruined by the rudeness of the staff!

We went and sat on the balcony for a bit, cause we both needed to chill out. Made some coffee, and finally loaded up and out by noon, over to lunch at Whispering Canyon before hitting the road. Kinda bummed that lunch there was not like dinner. We had done dinner last year, just husband and I because it was freezing and no one wanted to take the boat there, and we had a blast! But, we made the best of it, and my daughter was thrilled to receive 23 bottles of ketchup! My mom owns at Copper Creek but had never been there (Whaaat), and she was like WOW why didn't we stay here? So she went up to front desk and asked how much for a 2 bedroom for the night (We are out of points for the year). CM wrote down a number that I thought could not be real. So she was like screw it, let's stay another night! We got set up with a 2 bedroom at Boulder Ridge within an hour. We went to both pools, checked the place out, and cleaned up to head to MK for a few hours, just me hubs and the middle child. Had a great last night there, went and did some shopping before we left at the gift shop, and went to load up. I am pretty sure that the GM was down there assisting with luggage. I didn't get a look at her name tag, but she just had a vibe about her that was management. Very nice lady. We will be staying there on our next trip, which is hopefully during Christmas time!

Would also like to note the terrible table service on the DDP. We had done a few dinners OOP before our 3 day DDP stay at Kidani. Everything was great! We always do Tusker and Bier, and they were both wonderful experiences. Now when we did Boma, Rain Forest, and Sanaa, not so much. First thing asked is are you on a dining plan, and I swear when you say yes that's the que to stop giving a care about that table. At RF (and we did it mostly for the kids to experience it) we were asked if she should bring the kids food first. I said yes, and thankful that I did, because the adults plates took 45 mins to arrive. Place was near empty at that point as it was like 7:45. Kids were done eating. My poor 94 year old Grandma was like, where is dinner? Again, no explanations as to why it took so long, and I feel like I shouldn't have to beg for my food, she should have come over and said something, but she never did. As a party of 7, we have to tip 18% anyways so maybe they just say F it? I can ignore them and it doesn't make a difference? That's what it feels like. Sanaa was the same. Like my kids plates were sad and small, 5 small shrimp and 5 green beans? and she only came by once to ask how we were doing. Gave the wrong plates to my husband and Grandma and then he had to wait 20 mins for refire. Last time for DDP for us as well. The only good thing that came from DDP, is apparently Disney screwed up and somehow gave us another days worth of credit. We called and told them, we checked the CC's for extra charges, they were not there. They said look at it as a gift from Disney, which is why we did the Whispering Canyon lunch, and took home some snacks. Maybe as a way for making up for the bad things that happened? Who knows, but because of our split stay within a split stay at Kidani, we also ended up with like 18 refillable mugs to give as gifts.

Thanks for listening to my rants. I guess even on the worst day there, I would still rather be at Disney than in reality, but the treatment this trip was just not on par with the past trips, and I hope this isn't a sign of things to come.